Stazi are lethal

SPENDING even a short amount of time with electro duo Stazi can be confusing. The core members are hard enough to work out - singer and songwriter is Owen Rankin, an occasional stand-up comedian and DJ, while his keyboard-playing partner is Jeff Derbyshire.

SPENDING even a short amount of time with electro duo Stazi can be confusing.

Let's start by trying to introduce the core members - singer and songwriter Owen Rankin and keyboard-playing partner Jeff Warburton.

Sounds quite simple so far, except Owen is also a DJ and occasional stand-up comedian going by the name of Dr Strangehair.

Meanwhile, Jeff is also known as Jeoff Derbyshire (in homage to Delia Derbyshire, who wrote the Doctor Who theme) and his real name is Scott. He stepped in after the original keyboardist scarpered to Barcelona.

“I was a hardcore Stazi fan,“ Scott recalls, prior to their triumphant gig at Chorlton’s Blowout club. “I used to follow them around and they eventually agreed to let me join.”

The assorted cast who perform with Stazi on an ad hoc basis are even harder to fathom. Most famous is the Happy Mondays’ Rowetta on backing vocals: “She approached us and asked if she could sing with us,” says Owen.

"She said Stazi were the first band she has wanted to sing with since the Mondays split up. She might be lying, though.”

Then there’s the Grim Grinners, two Rastas called Dessie and Mark who do some toasting whenever they're handed the microphone.

And we haven’t even touched upon the dancers Bad Gimp and Badder Gimp; the Phantom Flan Flinger; or the man reading the property pages of the South Manchester Reporter, tutting at the soaring house prices in Chorlton.

Stomping

It could all smack of art school jokery if Stazi didn't back up the imagery with some marvellously catchy electro music tinged with a stomping northern soul beat.

Comparisons with other electro-pop duos come thick and fast - Pet Shop Boys, Sparks, Soft Cell and DAF - but Owen says “we prefer electro soul because that genre’s not been taken yet."

First single How Sleazy Do You Want It? impressed New Order’s management so much that they immediately snapped Stazi up, while its follow-up Love Is Lethal single has been delayed until the New Year while they wait for the remixes from the likes of the Fat Truckers and Atomizer.They've recorded ten tracks already for their debut album, which is pencilled in for "May or June 2004" and will feature their most instant tune Loving Arms, which features the riff from Guns ’n’ Roses’ Sweet Child O' Mine.

It's one of the reasons why they've become firm favourites on the dancefloors of Manchester’s Chips With Everything and Club Suicide as well as London’s Nag Nag Nag and Death Disco.

The latter is run by Alan McGee, who famously signed Oasis, Primal Scream and others to his Creation label, and who described Stazi’s gig there “as the maddest he has put on in 20 years.”

Breakdown

Mad gigs are a regular occurence in Stazi's world, though – after a recent charity gig with Snow Patrol in Thomastown, Kilkenny to raise funds for the town’s under-15 football team, Scott reckons he was "on the verge of a breakdown and tried to walk home across the Irish Sea to Manchester."

His place behind the keyboards was taken by a 16-year-old boy from Dublin. "He was better than Scott, actually," Owen says with a smirk.

So apart from the single, the album and shows as far afield as Germany and Italy, what else have Stazi got in the pipeline? "We're going to do metal versions of our songs with Bane Overlord, probably for the Chips With Everything Christmas special," promises Owen.

“And I'm going to see Dexys Midnight Runners at the Academy - I saw them on Top Of The Pops 2 and they didn't look that bad. It'll brilliant to hear Geno live, but it's seated which might be weird."

But before all that, there is their warm-up set for the white-suited trio Zoot Woman, who feature Madonna's musical director Stuart Price. How does Owen think it will go?

“It'll either be horrific - like the end of the world happening before your eyes - or we'll all have a good dance.”

Our money is on a mixture of both.

Stazi support Zoot Woman at the Roadhouse on Wednesday, October 29. Tickets are £7/£8 - call 0161 832 1111 or follow the link below. Stazi's second single Love Is Lethal is due in January on Chips Records.